When Television Characters Graduate

Most television writers don’t like change. If your formula isn’t broken, why fix it? But if your show is set in high-school, there is one shark you absolutely must jump: graduation. Kevin Fallon wrote about this conundrum for The Atlantic’s entertainment blog, where he examined how different shows have tried to keep the formula -- and the cast -- once they leave high school behind.

I agree, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was a grievous omission. The "Scooby Gang's" graduation saw the school burned to the ground in a colossal battle with a huge dragon, who had just eaten the principal. You had to be there I guess, but it remains near the top of my list of best shows ever. And I graduated in 1964.

Mr. Fallon overlooked "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Since BtVS's fantasy was a metaphor for high school as hell, not a soap transposing adult melodrama onto teens, Joss Whedon didn't miss a step when it pushed the characters out of the sandbox. The Scooby Gang graduated from the terrors of high school (vanquishing an all-encompassing evil at the graduation ceremony). Then they left to confront new horrors, like freshman year at the local community college (demon roommates, evil professors, frat parties) and "real world" jobs (exhausting construction work, indy band dreams, humiliation at the bottom rungs of Hollywood).